My (DIY)(Paper) Wedding Bouquet

Let’s talk bouquets – as I think I have (possibly repeatedly?) mentioned, I made mine, and it was great (the process, I mean, not the bouquet). Not to blow my own horn, but I also think that the bouquet turned out pretty awesome, a fact for which I am thankful. 

At what point in the wedding planning process did I decide to make my own bouquet? I can’t really remember, but I think it was very early on. I had to put up with a lot of doubting Thomases too. “You’ll be so stressed”, they said. “Real flowers are nicer!” “You’re a control freak who is unable to relinquish control over the smallest details of your life and one day you’ll have a breakdown”… You get the picture.

I wasn’t swayed though – I thought I would give it a try, and if I hated the result then I would just cobble together a real-flower bouquet at the last minute, using the Australian natives that I ordered for my reception. And as you might remember, I have made a couple of paper bouquets for other people – my friend Jacinta, and a nice lady who I don’t know (talk about trust, how flattering!). So to sum up, I felt reasonably confident. 

My inspiration was this AMAZING bridal bouquet by Lia Griffith, which I found on Pinterest. 

Isn’t it incredible? Lia Griffith is the undisputed master of paper flowers (and so much more…), so if you haven’t seen her website already, go check it out. 

I obviously had some pretty different colours in mind for my flowers, and I had a blast picking out colours at one of my favourite paper stores, The Paper Place in Mt Waverley. I did use Lia’s templates for the flowers though – they used to be free, but now the website is subscription based.

So here are the 6 different elements that went in to my bouquet. 

I used Lia’s templates for the ranunculus, chrysanthemums, dahlias and succulents, and I made my own templates for the budded eucalyptus and the spinning gum (my favourite). I will share both templates in a later post in case you want to try them out yourself. Because my wedding had a bit of a native/bush theme, I felt like the addition of the two types of eucalyptus worked really well. It gave the bouquet an Australian twist.

I also made the boutonnieres for the guys

As you can see, the buds on the eucalyptus branches aren’t paper – they are actually faux flower stamens which I purchased on eBay. I loved their delicate pink colour, which looks just like the real thing. If I could have figured out a way to make eucalyptus blossoms, I would have included them too – are there any prettier colours in nature?  

I wrapped the stems in burlap from… you guessed it… Bunnings :)

I absolutely loved how the bouquet turned out, and it was very nice having one less thing to stress about (once it was complete, that is!). It got lots of compliments on the big day – quite a few people were surprised to find out that the flowers weren’t real (which I think is a good thing?). The flowers are still going strong a year later – I took them out of their bouquet and put them in a vase on my kitchen table, where they look very happy. :)

So what do you reckon? Would you make your own wedding bouquets? Each to their own, but personally I say hell yes!